Where Did Everybody Go?

Somehow I lost everyone that were "members" except one. I hardly doubt my family would delete being members. SO what the heck happened?

A Productive Day Ends In What Could Only Be Described As A Cutting And Pasting Sweatshop.....

Here's what our day looked like before this happened. Apparently I could not read directions for our history project and so had 2 days worth of cutting and pasting piled up.... Poor Kelsey.

It had started so well.

Identifying patterns with odd numbers.

Keira practicing letters.

Lexia reading. 20 minutes every day.

Brain Pop! The Scientific Method.

Math fact puzzles.

Somewhere within here our cat threw up. That was a big deal to the kids for some reason. I thought you might need an "artist rendition" of the event to help you understand the fun of home-school.

This tends to start a whole new lesson about do all animals throw up? That line of questioning goes into some ugly territory about what else do all animals do that I have censored for your benefit.....

She is learning about compound words. She is also practicing two vowel words. "Two vowels get together and they play a game, one stays quiet and the other says it's name" (Like oat)

This is actually from yesterday. We had lots of fun active projects for this.

A timeline about Kelsey.

Her artifact box, it has important things about Kelsey. There are many drawings. The spider is there because she loves bugs, specifically spiders.

The beginning of her history lapbook.

Then there was this, which turned into the comic you just saw.

And then we called it a day!

:)

The Last Few Days of Packet 3 / Conference

As luck would have it Living Social did a special on tickets to the Scripps Birch Aquarium before my mother was due in town to visit. We had been studying habitats, and I had planned a whole ocean / tide pool mini field trip for the Friday that she would be here. We did get our required work done, but it was difficult for Kelsey since she wanted to play and visit with her Mema as her sister was doing... pretty much 3 feet from her while she sat patiently at her desk with her math work sitting in front of her. Needless to say we fought the good fight to keep the attention on our work, but alas, we gave in. This is a downfall to home-schooling, but even so. It is minimal.

Ah, but... the best laid plans of mice and men.....

So here are some pictures from our adventure.

The first few pictures are of the Thursday before my mom came out.

They love our hundred chart games. Keira is working on letters. We got her a little dollar store workbook so that she could feel part of the "class" with "work" to do.

Reviewing our even numbers.

She desperately wanted to wear her Chinese dress.....

but then she got hot, and decided on something more practical.

Discovering lines of symmetry, and the difference between infinite symmetry lines on a circle and those on triangles, squares, and rectangles.

Fun with reading comprehension and fables.

Colonial sign for history. Kelsey chose to be a blacksmith so that she could make horse shoes for ponies.

The photos from that Friday. My mom had come in late Thursday night. We worked through the morning and then headed to the aquarium that afternoon.. Here are our pictures from that adventure.

I had all these plans to make it a very educational mini field trip, but I felt bad for her after how the day had already went, so I tried to let her just explore things on her own and just be a kid.

The next week, we had conferences. There is nothing and yet so much to report. She is doing very well. Our teacher was very impressed with Kelsey's hard work. We turned in our samples for accountability, and talked about all our work and our projects. Kelsey showed the things she was proud of most, which was her rain forest book. We received some more material to work with, and said our goodbyes. 

The bigger thing to report is that she suddenly turned on these past weeks. It is like someone flicked on the switch, and now she is incessantly inquisitive about everything, ALL the time, all hours of the day and night. It is both wonderful and exhausting. We have had long conversations about how electricity and plumbing works, how a satellite works, why we can't see space, both the infinite vast sky of stars and planets, and the the space between two objects. This is just the tip of it. The questions cover everything you could imagine. She has already started questioning how it is physically possible for Santa to go to each home every night, how Rudolph must be very old, and wouldn't Santa need new reindeer, as well as the usual - we haven't ever SEEN him questions ect... I just tell her magic. 

Our new packet only seems to spark more interest. She is learning about physics, and her love for science, which has always been there is blossoming. She looks forward to experiments, demonstrations, and googling all her questions. It was only weeks ago that most things went over her head and she lived in the clouds, she is now ever present and interested in everything around her. It is really neat to see. She is proud of herself, she is taking chances, and she is not afraid to be wrong anymore. She has given me many opportunities to be  proud of her, but mostly I am just so happy she has such a want for answers, and has really grown her confidence. It is just perfect.

Oh Holy Bananas!

What the heck just happened to December? I am finally back to home-schooling. I lost a week from family visiting and had to make it back up, so that's what we were doing today, and will continue to do for the rest of this week. Working on old posts as well as new. Coming soon.....

What I've been working on tonight....

So if you don't know Quizlet.com is amazing! Watch the tutorial. It is free to everyone.



I have been combining the 1st grade sight words from her old school and her new school to make virtual flashcards! I finally have it finished. You can even print them out if you want real ones. (I had to put in 1st grade sight words under each word. It wouldn't let me leave the space blank.) I'll have to think on how to make it better.
http://quizlet.com/8665090/1st-grade-sight-words-flash-cards/

New Packet

Bear with me. I have had a lot on my plate, so the blog has been moved to the back burner. Not to worry. I will post soon! I am sure you are all on the edge of your seats, right? All 5 of you? ;)

I thought so!

Last Week of Packet 3!

After this week, I will have done a whole packet! There are 7 for the year. This one was a short packet, but I am confident we did well. I worked really hard. I spend a lot of time prepping at night to pull things that coincide with the curriculum, and getting things ready for the next day. Between the time I spend home-schooling and prepping, and my husband working 2 stores and late hours, we are both wiped out lately. Anyway, on to today's fun!

She has been working on habitats in science. She gets to watch a lot of videos online. One of them was about Humphrey the Whale who got stuck in the Sacramento River, and needed help to get home, a true story. The video was on Reading Rainbow, which I particularly love that they had. Then again I am mesmerized by the fact that Geordi La Forge is not wearing his Star Trek visor. Oh, yes, I just referenced Star Trek. Let the rumors be put to rest, I am in fact a huge nerd. I may just reference other sci-fi goodness like Mystery Science Theater 3000, a personal favorite of mine. Perhaps some Monty Python. Or I'll just get back to blogging about home-school. That was an over-share. Sorry.

Back to science, we watched an awesome video I found for jellyfish, and thanks to Living Social, I will be making a somewhat impromptu field trip to The Birch Aquarium in La Jolla on Friday. My mom is in town that day, and wants to help with home-schooling, but I am a control freak, and won't allow anyone else to help me. I'm working on that. Again, another over-share. :( 

Drifters of the deep from Eugenia Loli-Queru on Vimeo.

We did some interactive games and videos involving the ocean habitat, and she got to paint her ocean habitat picture to go into her habitat file. She loves Science and Math, so we try to do a lot with that.

History, a timeline about the 13 colonies.

Here she is making her rules if she had a colony. She didn't like a lot of the ones the colonists had to live with. Neither would I. She took that very serious. Jeez.

And this is what she came up with. Ironically she doesn't even like cranberry juice. I think Thanksgiving may have been a little suggestive with the cranberries? You must ride a bike on Saturday. No excuses!

Math. Learning about symmetry, more money, word problems, doubles, you know the usual.

She loves the mystery bag part. She likes having to guess how many things and getting it right. She's actually pretty good at it.

We practice with our hundred chart every day. Sometimes I do this, sometimes I have her write her numbers to 100. Sometimes we play a hundred chart game. Both my girls love the hundred chart game. Yeah, my youngest hangs around and drives her sister nuts all day, but she is a little sponge and I am amazed at how much 1st grade stuff she can pick up.

More practice with time. We seem to forget things over weekends. Mondays always require a little refresher.

Language Arts, clusters, rhyming, and songs. I am always amazed that she can read big words, but struggles on the smaller ones. It almost seems like she thinks, "no that can't be right, that's too easy, it needs another syllable or something."

An Iroquois Tale, "The Three Sticks" and reading comprehension. If you read this, you'll see that I have a resident tattler. 

This is the number line and the hundred chart that I laminated so that she can use dry erase markers on it for her math. It is exceptionally helpful for larger number addition and subtraction.

I also got to see what's in store for the next packet, and it is all about Egypt and Physics. Super excited! Inertia is something a klutz like me excels at!

Friday

I had meant to post what we did on Friday, so I thought I would do it today. Unfortunately I can remember what we did anymore. I only have these pictures I took. I guess I was really looking forward to the weekend, because I wiped it from my brain. All I remember is there was a Coastal Live History thing going on at her charter school. (Yes we home-school, but there is a physical school, where she can go two days a week and home-school for three days. We're on that waiting list, until then it is completely at home.) Anywho, there you have it.

Mud, Crayons, Cutting, Glue, and A Whole Lot of Construction Paper....

 We started late today, if you read yesterday's post you'll know why. I am feeling better anyway, but we started late with a minor diversion into geography. For whatever reason my kids had never really noticed the United States flag, and have been crazy about pointing it out for the last week and a half, EVERYWHERE. So I printed off a United States flag for her to color and taught her the pledge of allegiance, of course she'll have forgotten it, but we will probably start doing that everyday too. I also sang "The Star Spangled Banner" for her after her interest was piqued when I said that a flag was an identifier of a nation as was a song and items, like the Statue of Liberty. I haven't truly sung in a long time. It was quite rusty, and I think it is mutual that I not do that again, specifically THAT song.

One of the standards is that she needs to know her place in the world, not "place" as in her place is to be seen not heard, or any such nonsense, or get thee behind me. No, it means how she fits in. Too bad too, because I was hoping to teach her that her "place" was to sew in a sweatshop so that Mommy could compete with China, only on Etsy. I kid, I kid. So this is the earth, with our country identified, and our state and city. Those things on the left are pretend magnifying glasses, they "zoom" in to show our street and an identifying freeway, as well as the "In n' Out" She insisted that be in there. The next one "zooms" even closer to show our house, and her in the yard.

A minor detour. This is supposed to be a picture of my husband, but I think it looks like Count Purplica.

Here's the back, apparently it was a birthday card for him, his birthday was on Monday. Happy belated birthday, Daddy from Count Purplica!

This was our science experiment. Yes that is mud in baking sheets. It is supposed to represent how Rainforest habitats are like the one with the sponge. The water is still present, but also stored into the sponge, where it will continue to release moisture and water, keeping the earth very moist and providing water for communities. I think we put too much water in. I'm not sure they got anything out of this one.

The mud may not have worked, but we definitely learned about the layers of the rainforest. This is her coloring a book about it. I used parchment paper so that the pieces under could still be seen, and we layered them. I drew the "layers" but she colored them in and added the things that were specific to each layer, like butterflies, birds, snakes, monkeys, the sun, as well as herself on the ground to show how tall the trees were.

The finished product. On the right are little blurbs about the rainforest. They originally wanted me to have her staple just those together to make a book, but I thought this might illustrate the point better.

Showing the layers of parchment paper. The flash made it funny to where you couldn't see through it very easily. So I thought I would show you.

Good heavens! My hand looks a bit like a mangled finger spider or something. Clearly I am not a hand model! 

This was her literature assignment. She was to make a book based off of yesterday's Venn Diagram. She decided she would rather write about Christmas. The Venn Diagram did have Christmas in it, and I couldn't care. She wrote an illustrated a book. That was all that mattered.

This was our pre-writing. Kelsey doesn't care much for writing, so this was needed, otherwise the story would say, "It is Christmas. Then end."

This is her "keeping room" diorama from history. She informed me she would not like to live in Colonial times, since they did not have bath tubs and potties, among other things.

I think Keira's been feeling a little under-represented in the home school blog. I tried to tell her it was because she isn't home-schooling yet. She would hear none of that. Here is a picture of her holding a random object to placate my silly 4 year old.